These last few days have seen fierce competition take place in Astana to select the national Robotics team to compete in a forthcoming major international tournament in October, reports raem.kz.
The contest is set to take place in South Korea from 7-10 October and feature schoolchildren from more than 190 countries, which, in essence, is almost the whole world. For many, this will be the experience of a lifetime; chance to travel, broaden horizons, learn new skills, and experience the thrill of a major international tournament.
For the team that Kazakhstan sends, the same applies, but with a significant caveat… their country has won the last four, and therefore has a legacy to preserve.
Since 2022, four consecutive years have seen the Kazakhstan robotics team return home with the Grand Challenge Award gold medal. This week saw 40 teams contest the national championship, with those placing first selected to fly the flag in Incheon in six weeks time at the World Robotics Championship.
It all started in 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland, as the first of those victories came when the Kazakhstani team overcame the challenge of 178 other nations, including a refugee team, in a robotics event centred on the carbon capture theme – combatting climate change through robots.
Kazakhstan earned the most ranking points and was awarded the Grand Challenge Award gold. Mexico took silver, and Peru took bronze, as per the FIRST Global website.
The following year saw the local heroes place first of 191 teams who had flown to Singapore to demonstrate their expertise in the use of robots to store and transmit clean energy.
Robots extracted simulated water molecules, then separated them into hydrogen and oxygen, and connected elements of an energy system. Once again, Kazakhstan won the gold medal, but not every stage of the event was competitive because at the culmination of the contest, the six remaining teams were asked to combine their efforts to create a shared goal – and place their robots on a special structure.
A trip to Greece featured in 2024, Athens the destination for the top-ranked robotics team from their homeland, yet in spite of a change of theme, this time food security and sustainable food production systems, the outcome was the same. As they’d say in English football, the Kazakhs had won three on the bounce and were absolutely buzzing at the top of the table.
This time, the team also received a silver Albert Einstein Award, placing second to Mexico, and another silver for robot control skills. The former is awarded for a combination of robot performance, engineering excellence, teamwork, and adherence to FIRST Global principles.
It should be noted that the same team was not selected each time, as according to USTEM Foundation Director Asylbek Murzakhmetov, the participants were never the same in all three championships. This means that the results are not set to favour one single group of strong schoolchildren, but those producing the goods at the time, based on a system of national selection which values the training of new participants.
Fast forward to 2025, and the same reality applied, as a new team once again scored the most points in the whole contest, this time in Panama with the theme of Eco Equilibrium and a focus on protecting biodiversity and restoring damaged ecosystems.
Its fourth consecutive Grand Challenge Award gold was the result of skills unmatched by any of the other 190 entrant nations, while this time Kazakhstan won its first Albert Einstein Award, too. Adding to their trophy cabinets, and that of the whole country (by now in need of additional shelf space), were students of the 9th – 10th grades of NIS Almaty-Medeu: Rashat Dosymzhan, Daulet Iliyas, Alikhan Orynbasarov, Madiar Asetuly and Nurasyl Tursymbaev.
They had designed a robot to remove obstacles that were hindering environmental restoration and place biodiversity units in different parts of a controlled area.
The latest team is set to be announced over the coming days, and is not something organisers take lightly. Even making an application to participate in the preliminaries was a lengthy process, overseen by the USTEM Foundation and supported by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, the Ministry of Education, the Daryn Centre, Astana Hub, and partners.
As to the winners, their involvement in Incheon will be of particular interest to the global media, as Kazakhstan’s unprecedented string of success in this field means that other top countries will be even more determined to take the crown from them.
The 2026 theme is Igniting Innovation, which requires participants to develop and program robots which can perform tasks in a simulated forest fire environment. The key areas of focus are fire prevention, fire mitigation, and restoration of damaged areas. According to FIRST Global, the ideas must be scalable and not remain merely demonstration models.
As to whether the latest group of geniuses can keep the momentum going, we can only wait and see – and wish them good luck!
